2017 Wk 9 - Mostly Quilting

Friends of ours have had a fairly major life changing experience.  Nearly 17 years ago they had a son, called (names changed) Carl, but this New Year they wrote to friends and family to tell us that

"So, it turns out that nearly 17 years ago, when we announced the arrival of our son, Carl, that we were mistaken.  Instead we are proud to announce our transgender daughter Carla.

It would be very much appreciated if everyone would call her Carla, something we have been doing at home since the summer, and use female pronouns.

Her brother has been brilliant – he said the other day that 2016 has been a good year for our family and we are looking forward to 2017.  Carla plans to start driving mid-March, take her AS levels and visit universities.

We hope you will be as glad as we are that Carla has been able to express her true self and we look forward to seeing you soon."

I cant begin to understand what a difficult time they must have had leading up to this announcement, but I am really proud of the whole family.  Carla's birthday is very soon, so I messaged Mum to ask if it would be OK to make / send a gift, and if so what colours would be appropriate?  It tuns out her room is grey and orange.  I already had a quilt in mind.  The logo used by the LGBT communities is a rainbow, and rainbow is created by rain and sunshine - or tears and happiness?

This quilt, Rainy Day Rainbow, had been put on the 'time out' shelf as I wasn't happy that Orange was really represented, but if I was to make orange a feature - ie as binding, it could be a perfect quilt for Carla

Unusually for me this had been made as a patchwork top, so I spray based . . .  and quilted it!

Not quite matchstick quilting, but 85 quilting lines at about a minute each is plenty of quilting!

I don't have any orange (that'll be why there wasn't any orange in the top!) but I've ordered some spray time and will get it finished and posted as soon as the fabric arrived

As it was an otherwise quiet day at home I also knuckled down to making a dress,.  I had made 5 versions of this, all draft, to make sure the pattern really fits ME!

Number 5 came out ok but was made from curtains that are a bit too stiff.  (Pic for Janine who also recently made a dress from curtains, but hers is much better than mine!) Pls ignore the mess!

And finally I have a linen pocketed dress that I can wear!  (but with leggings so I can hide my knobbly knees!)  Not a bad way to spend 3 hours! (ignoring of course the proceeding 15 plus hours to get this far!)